Make your first game, part II: cross-platform and iPad tools.

In part I we took a look at a few tools available for PC users who want to experiment with making games of their own. Today we look at tools available for anyone running a non-Windows machine, or even those of you with access to only an iPad at present.

Let’s start with the cross platform tools:

Ren’Py

Built using the Python programming language, the Ren’Py engine is for anyone wanting to dive into making visual or kinetic novels. Many people are as driven by the idea of telling a story as they are of making a game that fits into their favorite genre. So testing yourself with a project in Ren’Py may be a great place to start making games. It’s available for Mac, Linux, and PC, exporting to those formats as well as Android, all for free!

A few commercially successful games have been developed using this engine, including the English teacher in Korea turned visual novelist, Christine Love’s Analogue: A Hate Story. You can start writing your game here.

(See: SUTD Game Innovation Programme pairs students with industry experts)

Stencyl

Available for PC, Mac and Linux, Stencyl employs a visual drag-and-drop editor to allow you to develop games with very little coding, though you’ll need to cut your teeth at game logic to get the most out of this 2D-game making software. It’s based on the flexible Haxe language, which was designed to be as cross-platform as possible. Games like Papers, Please were coded in Haxe, and the lovely platformer Ghost Song: A Journey of Hope, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter, is being made using Stencyl, though the developer flirted with the idea of using Unity at the time of the campaign .

You only need one license of Stencyl to publish to web, desktop and mobile, but you’ll need access to a Windows machine to publish on Windows and a Mac for OSX and iOS. With any tool, if you plan to release on iOS you’ll need to enroll in Apple’s developer program, which comes with an annual fee. You can start making browser games with Stencyl for free.

Unity